Warrior (Class Guide)

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Author: Anaku

Any of the three classes of tanks (Warrior, Dread Knight or Paladin) can tank any of the content within the game. That being said, each of the classes is better at some of the mob fights than others.

It is only natural to compare the tank classes with each other specifically when you are deciding what class you wish to play. Over a short burn fight, Paladins and Dread Knights (DK) will find it easier to hold aggro. A Warrior will take longer to build initial aggro than either a Paladin or Dread Knight so hate pushing from other group/raid members is particularly important for a Warrior.

The Warrior initially had very high Damage per Second (DPS), however, this has been paired back so that the DPS of Warrior and the DK are similar. Paladins are the ultimate tank against undead and have the best survivability followed by the DK, then the Warrior.

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While levelling up the warrior, it is best to max out both Strength and Dexterity with the balance going into constitution. At level 50+, it is normal to max out constitution and strength with the balance going into dexterity.

As the main tank there are two main things that you need to do; hold aggro and stay alive. No healer will be able to keep you alive if your mitigation or hit points are too low. If they are not high enough, healers will need to work very hard and will risk either healer hate or running out of mana.

Mitigation and hit points go hand in hand. When the mob hits you, it will be with a certain amount of damage. If your mitigation is 50%, only half of that damage will translate into a loss of hit points. There are two main mitigations that appear on your character sheet, melee mitigation and spell mitigation.

Melee damage is the primary damage that you will take as a tank. Melee mitigation is impacted by three things: Armour Class (AC); equipment with mitigation stats; and AC buffs from players & civic diplomacy.

At level 55 every 146 points of AC translates into 1% melee mitigation and every 52 points of equipment stat mitigation equates to 1% mitigation.

Some mobs will do a strikethrough that will ignore your mitigation – then you will have to rely on hit points.

The level of mitigation that you see on your character sheet (float your mouse pointer over the defence stat) is your mitigation based against a mob at the same level as you.

As a general guide, it is considered that you effectively lose 5% of mitigation for every level that the mob has over you. So at level 50 fighting a level 53 mob, you effective mitigation would be 15% lower that what it reads on your character sheet.

The tooltip for melee mitigation caps outs at 65%. The target for melee mitigation is to achieve this 65% melee mitigation raid buffed while in your offensive stance. The extra 15% mitigation you get by switching into defensive stance will then equate to 65% melee mitigation against a level 53 mob if you are level 50.

So, at level 55 you might have AC from your equipment of 4395 (30% melee mitigation), melee mitigation rating on your equipment that adds up to 520 (10% melee mitigation), civic diplomacy buff for AC +5% and raid buffs that give you another 2200 AC (15%).

AC also affects spell mitigation but at a far lower rate (664 AC per 1% at level 55). Spell mitigation on equipment is at the same rate as melee mitigation on equipment (52 points per 1% at level 55). General mitigation on equipment, means that it applies to both spell and melee mitigation.

The following example assumes a player at level 55 with fire resistance of 342 fighting a level 55 mob. The mob casts a fire spell and you have a 12.4% (cap 20%) chance of completely resisting the spell.

If you fail this roll, a roll is done to see if you partially resist the spell. You have a 31.6% (cap 60%) chance to partially resist the spell. If you pass this roll check you will mitigate 45% (cap 45%) of the fire damage and if you fail the roll you will only mitigate 22.5% (cap 22.5%).

If the mob is hitting you with a weapon that does fire melee damage, you will be doing a straight 10% (cap 10%) mitigation of the fire melee portion.

Resist equipment including continent styles can increase these resistances.

HIT POINTS
So, you have managed to maximise your mitigation to reduce the amount of damage you take when you get hit by a mob. The next step is to ensure that you have enough hit points so that the hit from the mob does not kill you, or provide insufficient time for a healer to respond. Sooner or later you will be in boss fights with a lot of lag, or group stuns, and you may end up taking two or three hits before the healer can respond.

As a tank, you should already have your constitution value of your character sheet attributes – at maximum. At level 55, this will give you 4.2 hit points per constitution point and 1 point of resists for every 10 points of constitution.

Equipment can also have both hit point and constitution stats on them.

It is also important to maximise your constitution before taking tank meat as the hit point amount got from the meat is related to your buffed constitution value.

At low levels, constitution does not scale well give a lot of hit points. As your level increases this becomes a far better investment. At lower levels you are trying to ensure that you have enough hit points to survive getting hit by mobs that are 3 levels higher than you. It can be difficult for a warrior to hold aggro at lower levels, so maxing out strength (for damage) and dexterity (for critical hits) can really work well here with the balance going in constitution.

As you progress through the levels, I move points out of dexterity into constitution. This means that at higher levels, I have both strength and constitution maxed out with the balance in dexterity. I replace the loss of dexterity by items with critical hit chance bonuses on them.

A good first target is to achieve 8,000 hit points un-buffed and 65% melee mitigation in defensive stance (against an even level mob). Your next target after this is to hit 65% melee mitigation in offensive stance for an even level mob – this means that if you switch to defensive stance, you will have 65% melee mitigation against a mob 3 levels higher than you. Also at this stage you should be looking for equipment that increases your spell mitigation, damage and hit points as well.

Eventually (with good weapons), the extra damage generated from being in offensive stance will generate more hate than the hate generation bonus given in defensive stance. While this is great when main tanking, it means that when you are assist tank, you want virtually no hate generation (except say cleave and savagery) in any macros that you have and ideally have a hate debuff like ”gift of peace” applied. The main disadvantage of going offensive is that you lose a significant amount of melee evasion. This will not impact on the amount of any hit you receive but will impact on the amount of hits you receive in a fight. Look out for your healer here, if you suddenly seem to be taking a lot of hits and they are struggling to keep you up – switch to defensive.